It was a day like any other so far. It was not terribly hot and pretty dry; a little breeze kicked up the dry dirt around them. The sun was two fingers above the tree line on the hill across the way, so about another thirty minutes before it slipped behind the trees and another half-hour before dark. An invaluable lesson that his father had taught him while doing farm work as a kid. This was his second tour in the Balkans.
The countryside was gorgeous and it reminded him of his home in Kentucky. The first trip had been to Albania to help keep the airport secure for attacks on Kosovo. The second trip was to Kosovo itself. This was considered a “police action,” they were supposed to be there setting up a government and helping to stabilize the country. He stood there at the edge, his well worn boots making similar tracks as everyone else. The Kentuckian was just staring at the hole in the ground – it was half as long as a football field and just as wide. His shoulders sagged under his flak vest. Not from the weight of his gear, but from the image before him. It was a mass grave believed to be Kosovar Albanians, most likely members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA were considered terrorists by the UN and the U.S. (later reversed) and the Serbs, including Slobodan Milosevic.
The aforementioned powers were forcefully removing Albanians from Kosovo in order to maintain Serbian control of the country. The Serbs had controlled what is currently known as former Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1990. In essence, the League of Communists of Serbia had controlled former Yugoslavia. The Serbians had conducted a long campaign of trying to maintain control of the region. Milosevic had already faced the joint national forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, before seeing them again in Kosovo.
The reason the mass grave was overwhelmingly horrific was not because of the pile of bodies or the stench. Lye had recently been tossed about to dampen the smell and start the process of decomposition for when the bodies would be incinerated later. Yes, the bodies were grotesque and contorted. But, it was the ages of individuals that were in the grave that made it atrocious. The bodies included small children, as old as two, as well as, the elderly. Men and women alike were strewn about. If it had been men of fighting age, then you could probably say that it was a lost battle, but you couldn’t even tell yourself that lie. This was utterly and completely genocide. The real question is why were U.S. troops there. The American Empire isn’t exactly known for its support of secession.
Milosevic had also been charged with “wreaking systematic and wanton destruction to religious sites and cultural monuments.” Of course, this was after charges of genocide, sexual assault, murder, and forced deportation. He claimed all this damage was not of his doing and that it was the NATO bombing that had destroyed these sites and Serbian sites alike. Yet, Serbian sites remained intact. Serbs claimed that the KLA started the Albanian and Serbian War. The KLA did start attacking Serbian police during the dissident Albanian protests. The dirty secret of the KLA is the fact that while it was denounced by NATO, it was trained by the intelligence agencies of America and Germany. America opted out of arming the KLA and left that up to the Germans.
The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) or German intelligence service, had been pecking away at the Communist Serbs for some time. Josip Broz Tito had been drawing communists together from Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, and Bosnia, creating a secret parallel society. Originally aligned with the Soviet Union, in 1948 Tito was able to successfully defy the USSR, leave the Cominform, and form an independent Yugoslavia. He also purged any Stalin loyalists. This is also the time that any and all Albanian history was replaced with Serbian history. Kosovo was part of Serbia, it had just been granted autonomy in 1989; when Milosevic took the over, he removed that autonomy and replaced any offices held by Albanians with Serbians.
NATO would later claim that the KLA had been involved in a campaign of provocation against the Serbian government, not that the Serbs or the Albanians needed much provocation in the first place. They had been at war from 1918 until 1945 when the League of Communists of Yugoslavia took over and suppressed all nationalism through the secret police. This is also the beginning of the BND in Yugoslavian affairs. The KLA had been trained by NATO intelligence and later labeled as terrorists. Also, the KLA were never sentenced or charged, and made up the majority of the police force when NATO entered Kosovo to stabilize the region, even though the KLA outright admitted to sabotaging police stations and illegal arms smuggling. Ongoing assaults on police stations is a tactic that has been seen elsewhere in the world, too.
What does any of this have to do with some dumb kid from Kentucky. In the grand scope of things, not very much. What happened there are the same tactics that occur several places across the globe. The one thing that seemed so horrific to that young man from Kentucky was created, more or less, by the same bureaucrats that sent him to the Balkans in the first place. In essence, the proof that he was needed there probably never would have existed without outside involvement. Here is your proof he was told, here is your proof that what we have done is just, that the area had been destabilized, and we have come to stop atrocities and bring stabilization and the joys of democracy!
A deeper dive really reveals that none of that probably would have been necessary if it hadn’t been for outside involvement in the first place.
That young man should have stayed in Kentucky, instead of traveling to Kosovo.
-By Dixie Anon
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
